Things
by toroj
Summary: Post-reichenbach. Angst. One-shot.


Polish title: Przedmioty

Author: toroj

Translation: Serathe

Betareading: AnimaBaya

Things

"I'll bring it to Molly to the mortuary", I say, closing a thermal bag. "She might have some way of getting rid of them. We can't just throw human remains to the rubbish. If someone finds them, there'll be issues.

My voice sounds calm and reasonable. I'm listening to it like one listens to a radio broadcast.

Mrs. Hudson nods, closing the fridge. Her eyes stop at the giant harpoon standing in the corner.

"Dear God", she sighs. "Where did he get that horrendous instrument? What should we do with all this?"

I don't know.

I know. There is a fixed pattern. One should gather the things of the deceased. Sort them out. Let the family take some keepsakes. Give the rest to charity. Then throw the rest out.

But I don't want to know that. There, outside Barts, why was I only ran over by a bike and not by a car? I would be lying in a hospital right now, high on morphine or even on a respirator, blessed with ignorance.

Mrs. Hudson moves to the living room, starts clearing away the papers from the desk and putting them into a cardboard box.

"Will you take his books, John?"

"Some of them", the speaker answers in my voice.

I take another box and go to Sherlock's bedroom. Will Mycroft want to keep something as a memento?

Suprisingly, I felt a little relieved in the bedroom. Paradoxically, Sherlock's personality left a weaker imprint in here. It's more tidy, less Holmes-like. The living room was his dominion, here he had only slept.

Sherlock...

I was with him, when he resembled a cold statue on the Mount Everest of intellect and when he was "bored" and his thin body trembled in a manic episode. I've seen him over a corpse and over a cup of coffee, in a chase through the streets of London and on the moors of Dartmoor... And in pyjamas, with ruffled hair and holding an electric shaver in his hand... I was with him in the moments of great illumination and complete folly. When he laughed and when he was sad. I was allowed through the most private areas, to those secret drawers containing all things awful, shameful, innocent and amusing peculiarities. He was showing me, maybe the one person from all the world, his human side. I was with him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. In the minutes of the biggest glory and the biggest fall... So why has he chosen the way into the Darkness. Why did he choose death and not... me?

When I open the closet door, I see trousers, jackets and shirts hanging in order, on the shelf - a few T-shirts he wore so rarely, a grey sweatsuit... He won't wear any of these things anymore. Mycroft ordered to dress his brother's body up in a suit for the coffin - I suppose it was a suit that cost an amount of money that is inconceivable for someone like me. And a tie... Sherlock hated ties. I can't bear to touch anything that came into direct contact with Sherlock's skin. It's too personal. It hurts too much. It would be better if Mrs. Hudson packs those things by herself, later on. I don't want to be the composed doctor at the moment, nor a cold-blooded soldier. I want to fall on the floor, and just cry and howl.

But I'm still standing and looking at what is left of my friend. All those things that in one moment lost their purpose for existing. They seem to look at me also and to wait in a tense silence for my decision concerning their fate. It was only a while later that I notice a yellow sticky note on the inside of the door. On it there are were numbers.

07.7

Zero-seven. Dot. Seven. Two sevens, zero, dot. Is it some kind of a cipher? Why did he put it here? Why in the closet...?

"Seven, seven...", I whisper. The brain, numbed with antidepressants, puts up resistance like a rusty machinery. "Seven, seven..."

The note is turned up in a corner - maybe it's been hanging in here for some time. Sherlock had to see it every morning, while taking out some fresh clothes. He wrote down something that may have been important. Something that he didn't want to store not only in the chambers of his Mind Palace. Something he didn't want to forget.

I carefully close the closet's door, as if I didn't want to wake someone who's asleep with its creaking. And I leave, I don't have the strength, I can't...

Seven, dot, seven. Seventh, seventh.

I stop with my hand on the door handle.

The seventh of July.

My birthday.


End file.
